Category: Carbon Brief_RSS

The chances of anywhere in the UK hitting 40C – a temperature not yet recorded in the country – are likely to increase rapidly in the coming decades, a new study finds. At present, the UK is only expected to see 40C heat once in every 100 to 300 years. But this could rise to every […]

As global temperatures continue to rise, there has been a stubbornly cool patch of ocean in the North Atlantic that has intrigued scientists for years. This is the North Atlantic warming “hole” – also known as the “cold blob”. While the world has seen temperatures rise by an average of 1C over the past century, […]

The world’s southernmost weather station has seen record-high temperatures over the past three decades, a new study says. The Amundsen-Scott station, located at Antarctica’s south pole, recorded warming that was three times higher than the global average from 1989 to 2018, according to the research. However, this rate of warming was not consistent across Antarctica. […]

China’s CO2 emissions have surged back from the coronavirus lockdown, rising by 4-5% year-on-year in May, analysis of new government data shows. Emissions fell an estimated 25% in the six weeks following the lockdown, from early February to mid-March, before bottoming out, as factories and power plants reduced output. Road and air traffic also fell […]

The rapid rise of social media over the past two decades has brought with it a surge in misinformation.  Online debates on topics such as vaccinations, presidential elections (pdf) and the coronavirus pandemic are often as vociferous as they are laced with misleading information.  Perhaps more than any other topic, climate change has been subject […]

The UK government “must seize the opportunity” for a “green recovery”, says the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) in its latest report. This “once-in-a-lifetime” chance, enabled by the coronavirus crisis, is outlined in the CCC’s bumper 196-page annual “progress” report. It also highlights a lack of progress by the government over the past year towards […]

The buying up of tropical forest by private companies and foreign governments enhances deforestation in the majority of cases, new data confirms. Palm oil, wood fibre and tree plantations were the commodities most consistently linked with increased tropical deforestation over the past two decades, according to the study.  The assessment, published in Nature Geosciences, explores […]

Renewables were the largest source of new energy in 2019, but there were still record highs for oil, gas and CO2 emissions, according to new global data from oil giant BP. Low-carbon electricity generation also matched global coal power for the first time in 2019, analysis of the data shows. Further gains for wind and […]

The world has a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to pour investment into clean energy and create millions of new jobs, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Its “sustainable recovery plan” for the coronavirus pandemic lays out a series of measures that the agency says would ensure 2019 was the “definitive peak” for global emissions. Launched in […]

The past few months have seen some remarkable weather, from the UK’s sunniest spring on record to Siberia’s dramatic heatwave and “zombie wildfires”. Key to this unseasonable weather are persistent high-pressure “blocking” weather systems, which bring clear, dry conditions on the ground below for many days or weeks. Blocking events bat away oncoming low-pressure systems […]